The Present invention relates to safety glasses, and more Particularly to safety glasses worn by a surgeon during endoscopic surgery to prevent the wearer's eyes from being contacted by bodily fluids which might be encountered during an endoscopic procedure.
Endoscopes today are used in a wide variety of procedures which are well known to those in the medical profession. These procedures include passing a long thin optical fiber element through an orifice in the body to permit the endoscopist to view internal parts of the body through the optic fiber. An eyepiece is generally connected to the optical fiber to facilitate viewing by the endoscopist.
It is also generally known in the profession that during an endoscopic procedure bodily fluids of various types can exit around and through the endoscope near the eyepiece so as to splash the endoscopist. Contact between infected bodily fluids and a physician's eye and skin breaks in other surrounding facial parts can transmit any one of a number of maladies, such as Acquired Immune Deficiency syndrome (AIDS), to the physician.
Various devices have been developed to prevent these bodily fluids from contacting the endoscopist. Such devices include those disclosed in U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,848,322 and 4,834,068. Both these patents disclose a relatively large cumbersome shield through which the eyepiece of the endoscope projects in order to prevent infectious fluids from reaching the face of the user.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,958,623 teaches a rubber ring which is attached to the eyepiece of the endoscope and which contacts the eye of the endoscopist to prevent fluids from contacting the eye. This device has the drawback of only providing protection for one eye of the endoscopist.
A more conventional approach which physicians take for eye protection is safety glasses, in order to prevent fluid from contacting the eyes. Safety glasses are preferred by physicians since they generally have larger lenses and provide protection for both eyes as well as considerable portions of the face surrounding the eye. A further advantage of safety glasses is that they are convenient to use as compared to large shields which are placed in front of the entire face.
However, a significant problem with safety glasses worn during endoscopic procedures is not that they fail to provide protection from bodily fluids, but rather they make it very difficult to align the eyepiece of the endoscope with the physicians eye to permit clear unobstructed vision through the endoscope. This problem often results in the physician removing the glasses during the operation to better align the endoscope with his eye. This action of removing the glasses further increases the risk of infection to the physician. Infectious contact can result not only from bodily fluid directly contacting the eyes but also from the physicians hand which might contact a break in his facial skin when removing the glasses.